How to Plan the Ultimate 2017 Sales Kickoff Meeting

It’s that time again. Time to plan your annual sales kickoff meeting. Check out our easy-to-follow sales kickoff and reinforcement tips to help you plan the ultimate sales kickoff meeting for next year.

1. Plan an Awesome Sales Kickoff Event.

To make your sales kickoff meeting effective and exciting, you need to prepare in advance. It’s your opportunity to empower the team about your company and what they can accomplish. Having the right attitude and mindset is an essential component.

Take the opportunity to reveal and train on anything new including products, comp plans, methodologies, messaging and/or markets. Get them excited, but also, help them stay informed.

Your sales kickoff meeting will surely include some fun activities, seminars, icebreakers, guest speakers, and a chance to network. While you may be focusing on how to wow your reps with entertainment, what you should really be thinking about is your investment.

You’re taking on the cost of not only the event, but also taking all of the attendees away from their regular role for a certain amount of time. Be sure you plan a meeting that’s worth the costs.

2. Reinforce, Reinforce, Reinforce.

Now that the meeting has ended, your actions after the sales kickoff meeting is entirely more relevant.

To accomplish this, create a system, and use technology to simplify it:

Use online quizzes and surveys so sales managers can collect knowledge about their reps before sessions

Use video recording technology to measure pitches and other performance skills

Use online learning modules to deliver coaching information in a short, digestible format.

Upping your sales coaching game while specifically tailoring your messaging to match what’s being covered during the sales kickoff meeting will make all of the effort you poured into one week of the year, last for the other 51.

3. Measure Your Sales Kickoff ROI.

Don’t wait until after the kickoff meeting to measure results. The most successful sales organizations are mixing technology and a little creativity to measure performance before and after.

Plan to record each sales rep’s pitch prior to kickoff, and then record them again afterwards to directly compare performance? This might sound like a headache but it’s easy with the right partner and solution.

LearnCore’s Pitch IQ allows sales leaders to enable their teams with easy-to-use technology that allows them to record their pitch for playback, reviewing, and critical feedback. Team members can rate each other’s performance, and managers can even select top performance to use as training for the rest of the team.

Instead of sticking to the typical metrics, use technology to boost your measurement game. If you wait to track performance through actual sales, it may already be too far into the year. Measure whether your sales reps improved their performance, and actually captured the new information highlighted at your sales kickoff meeting early on using technology like PitchIQ.

It’s time to realize your sales kickoff meeting isn’t all about the actual meeting. Make your investment last by focusing on reinforcement and measurement to improve the performance of your sales reps.